Amidst weeks of archival research on the Baltimore branch of the Black Panther Party at Goucher College, I discovered a box of political pins. Inside the insulated archival pages was a pin with a bright yellow background featuring a red medical caduceus surrounding a Black Power fist. Overarching the top and bottom was text that read “People’s Free Medical Clinic.” 1
Until that point, I had only found vague references to the Baltimore free medical clinic, attributed to a partnership between the Baltimore Defense Committee (BDC) and the Panthers. Though the pin was a symbol for a clinic that would never come to be, the attempt to build it was one of many acts of solidarity between the BDC and Panthers. The story of the BDC and the Panthers uncovers a long untold portion of Baltimore organizing history and illuminates the work of an understudied Panther branch through the lens of its supporters. Heavy Duty Slide Rails
The predominantly white anti-Vietnam War Baltimore Defense Committee originally grew out of support for the Catonsville Nine, Catholic protestors who burned Maryland draft records in 1968. The BDC eventually expanded their organizing, naming a “responsibility to build upon the action of the Nine.” The Committee explained in their statement of purpose:
The same U.S. institutions which victimize [B]lack Americans and poor Americans, which perpetuate racism and poverty and war, which discourage unionization of working people, which keep people powerless to control their own lives, likewise victimize nations and peoples abroad whey [sic] they fall within these institutions’ spheres of influence and control. 2
Like other anti-war activists of the time, the Committee began to connect the anti-imperialist struggle abroad to the systems of racism within the U.S. 3 The BDC participated in actions, released a newsletter, supported organizations like the Panthers, and were monitored by the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program. The BDC’s platform expansion heeded the Panther call for white activists to organize in their own communities. Summer 1969 and early 1970 BDC newsletter issues highlighted ways community members could support the Panthers including attending the trial of Panther Zeke Boyd and Friends of the Panthers meetings. 4
The Catonsville Nine. Jean Walsh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By August 1969, Jim Keck, a founding member of the BDC, stated that the group was discussing their next course of action. Mary Moylan, a nurse and member of the Catonsville Nine, suggested establishing a free medical clinic with the Panthers. The Committee approached the Baltimore Panthers, and together they set out to find “money, a building, and medical personnel.” Keck drafted an insignia and form to send with fundraising letters which included the symbol of the People’s Free Medical Clinic—the symbol on the pin in the archives.
Meanwhile, the Black Panther Party was in the midst of substantial federal and local repression which involved raids, arrests, and assassinations. The Party’s decision to bring health to the forefront of the Party’s politics was “a strategic calculation to literally and figuratively stay alive.” 5 While it was not an official Party directive until April 1970, many Panther branches began establishing People’s Free Medical Clinics (PFMCs). The PFMCs grew out of the Party’s holistic health politics which eventually became codified in the Party’s updated Ten-Point Platform in March 1972. The clinics built on a long tradition of Black “institution building as a recourse to health equity” and modeled themselves after other free clinics of the time, working “in solidarity—and sometimes, in tandem” with other members of the radical health movement to share labor, funding, and supplies. 6
On a local level, the Baltimore Panthers were in the midst of transition. John Clark took over as Defense Captain in August 1969, and that same summer, the branch established their free breakfast program at St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church. The breakfast program was the most robust of the branch’s survival programs. In addition to its approximately 50-100 members and community workers, the branch relied on a loose alliance of interracial collectives and organizations who supported the Party with funding, volunteers, and solidarity. 7
December 1969 flyer listing Black Panther Party events around the United States, including a December 16th teach-in at University of Maryland, College Park, featuring speakers from the Baltimore Panthers. Image via Flickr by Washington Area Spark, CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed
In January 1970, the BDC and the Panthers announced the opening of the People’s Free Medical Clinic in West Baltimore in an issue of the Committee’s newsletter. The newsletter stated the clinic would “try to meet [the people’s] specific health needs and at the same time, respect their dignity as human beings…a far different experience from the often poor care and lack of concern found in city hospitals.” 8 The newsletter described the need to raise “several thousand dollars for a down payment and other initial costs,” and provided readers with brochures describing the clinic and fundraising efforts which they could distribute throughout the community. 9
By early 1970, the Committee began its search for a building close to West Baltimore Panther offices. The search included a white pediatrician, Dr. Lee Randol, who had volunteered his services. Keck described the visit to the building with the Panthers:
Dr. Randol was saying, ‘Okay, this looks good. We could put a couple of examining rooms over in this area and we could build a little laboratory over here.’ And while he was doing that, the Panthers were over at the windows saying, ‘We could sandbag these windows and have a clear line of fire down to the street from here.’ And I was scared to death that Lee Randol was going to be scared off by all of this, but he never batted an eyelash and just kept going. It was shortly after that the Panther [h]eadquarters, I believe it was in Chicago, was raided by the police and the word came down that Panther organizations were not to ally themselves with white groups anywhere because white groups were so infiltrated with the police. So the Panthers said, ‘You know, we can’t do this with you. We’re out.’ But by that point I had raised two thousand dollars and so we split the money evenly, gave half of it to the Panthers.
Panther accounts of the clinic partnership differ slightly in detail. Panther Paul Coates stated that the two groups were simultaneously building clinics around the same time. Coates explained that the Panthers gave all the supplies and equipment they had collected to the BDC for clinic use. 10 It is important to note that the Party did not explicitly direct branches not to ally themselves with white organizations. In fact, as Huey P. Newton described the Party was “willing to accept aid from the mother country as long as the mother country radicals realize that we have, as Eldridge Cleaver says in Soul on Ice, a mind of our own.” More to the point, the BDC themselves recognized that “white people, too, have to deal with exploitation and oppression” and that the Party “endeavored to create coalitions with progressive people of all colors.” 11
The Baltimore branch of the Black Panther Party offices, courtesy of It’s About Time Archives.
Still, the assassination of Chicago Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton did prompt many Panthers branches to turn inward in fear of arrests and raids. The Baltimore Panthers’ withdrawal from the clinic was most likely attributed to the substantial police repression the branch faced in spring 1970. The BDC moved the location of the clinic to Waverly-Charles Village at 3028 Greenmount Avenue, closer to Committee members’ home base. Under its new name and insignia, The People’s Community Health Center opened in May 1970 and continued in some form until 2014. 12 The coalition organizing between the BDC and the Panthers persisted.
In spring 1970, when Baltimore police raided the Panther breakfast program and headquarters, the BDC gathered in the streets with other radical activists to protect the Panthers from police repression. 13 While Panthers were armed inside headquarters, Communications Secretary Connie Felder and Captain Clark alerted community contacts and the media. Felder remembered: “Word got out to a lot of people in the community fast, so before you knew it, the streets were crowded with people…to protect us so [the police] wouldn’t raid the place.” 14 A grainy black and white photo from a May issue of The Baltimore Sun features a group of about twenty activists, their backs against the wall outside Panther headquarters, some standing closer to the street, holding vigil. 15 Panther Nkenge Touré explained how during the three-weeks long siege, the white radical left “would bring us food and other stuff, and we put the baskets out the window and pull this thing, the supplies up into the house.”
Radical organizations like the BDC understood that solidarity encompassed a wide variety of tactics, often simultaneously. Not only did they educate their own communities, but the BDC shared funding, labor, and supplies with the Party. And when it mattered, they put their lives on the line to make sure that the Panthers survived. As Coates explained, the “white folks” understood that “[they] gotta protect the vanguard.” 16 Lieutenant Steve McCutchen described the community support in the pages of The Black Panther: “The streets themselves seemed to come alive with the spirit of the people, and the desire to hold the liberated territory of Black people.” 17 The BDC embodied Huey P. Newton’s directive for white radicals to “defend us, by attacking the enemy in their community.” The absence of Panther assassinations at the hands of police in Baltimore was due in part to the community support received from the BDC.
Though BDC members and Dr. Randol remained active in the clinic, the Committee disbanded in the early 1970s. The Baltimore branch, like all Panther branches, centralized in Oakland in 1972. That political pin, now, feels even more like a historical unicorn—a relic of a free health clinic that never came to be. In many ways, it represents a long-term interracial coalition that was never allowed to fully blossom. Though short-lived, the coalition still stands as a model for what is possible when white activists heed the call of the Black radical vanguard, and together, reimagine what is possible.
The site of the People’s Community Health Center – 3028 Greenmount Avenue, circa 2024. Photo by Gabrielle Spear.
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